The Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos, Mia Amor Mot­t­ley, has test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19, an of­fi­cial state­ment from the Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vice of Bar­ba­dos has con­firmed.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, PM Mot­t­ley is said to be do­ing well, de­spite the di­ag­no­sis:

“Prime Min­is­ter Mia Amor Mot­t­ley has test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. It is a mild case, and she has in­di­cat­ed that she is do­ing well. 

The doc­tors have ad­vised that she will re­main at home un­til they de­ter­mine oth­er­wise.

Deputy Prime Min­is­ter San­tia Brad­shaw will per­form the func­tions of Prime Min­is­ter dur­ing this pe­ri­od.”

Ear­li­er this month, Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley was one of sev­er­al CARI­COM lead­ers who at­tend­ed the IX Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as. 

Dur­ing the Sum­mit, she made a pow­er­ful ar­gu­ment as to why coun­tries of the Amer­i­c­as must act quick­ly and de­ci­sive­ly to pro­tect their peo­ples from spi­ralling prices, while guar­an­tee­ing their ac­cess to crit­i­cal sup­plies. 

In ad­di­tion to ad­dress­ing the is­sue of cli­mate change, PM Mot­t­ley al­so em­pha­sized the im­por­tance of deal­ing with sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions, es­pe­cial­ly as they im­pact the re­gion’s abil­i­ty to re­cov­er from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and keep in­fec­tions down.

“Why can’t we have an Amer­i­can sup­ply plat­form that treats to the most crit­i­cal sup­plies, so that we can re­duce the price of crit­i­cal goods, from vac­cines to wa­ter pipes to all oth­er things that are im­pact­ing our abil­i­ty to de­liv­er prop­er ser­vices to our peo­ple?” she asked fel­low re­gion­al lead­ers, as she called for the hemi­spher­ic group­ing to use its co­op­er­a­tive ef­forts to build joint plat­forms for pro­cure­ment, sim­i­lar to the African Med­ical Sup­plies Plat­form, which pro­cured COVID 19 vac­cines for mem­ber states at the height of the pan­dem­ic.